She, somewhat aloof, replies, No. She has simply been sitting long enough.
And on the threshold she asks, insinuatingly, “You will read my manuscript personally?”
For a second I am strongly impelled to return her manuscript, thus wreaking vengeance upon her for my wife.
But she has already closed the door and is gone, without having waited for a reply. Perhaps she had noticed the spark of displeasure that shone in my eyes.
“What sort of impudent cat is that?” asks my wife.
I burst into laughter.
The next day she did not come. Nor the day after. But on both days I thought that she had not come. I did not wish to give the matter thought, but it haunted me, made me uneasy. If she had promised to come, she should have kept her word.
I read her manuscript. A very wretched tale. It was supposed to depict the yearning of a solitary woman for an unknown man. But the words were weak and the colours false. And I could not get away from the idea that perhaps she had written them just to have a pretext for coming to me. “The impudent cat!”
On the third day she came. From the door she laughed to me with her deep, staccato laughter. “Kept you waiting?”